Skip to footer

Mars Opportunity rover sees its own shadow in crater

Opportunity just started moving again two weeks ago, after spending more than four months at a site along Endeavour's rim called Greeley Haven. The rover sat out the harsh Martian winter at the site, whose tilt allowed Opportunity to angle its solar panels toward the low-hanging sun.  

|
NASA/JPL-Caltech/Cornell/Arizona State Univ.
NASA's Mars rover Opportunity catches its own late-afternoon shadow in this dramatically lit view eastward across Endeavour Crater on Mars.
  • By SPACE.com Staff

The late-afternoon sun lights up a huge Martian crater in a spectacular new photo snapped by NASA's Opportunity rover, and the robot's own shadow makes it into the shot.

The Opportunity rover was perched at the western edge of Mars' Endeavour Crater when it captured the image. Endeavour is about 14 miles (22 kilometers) wide, and Opportunity has been exploring the many outcrops along its rim since August 2011.

The photo is a mosaic composed of images taken with Opportunity's panoramic camera between 4:30 and 5 p.m. Mars time, mostly on March 9, NASA officials said. The scene is presented in false color to highlight differences in materials, such as the dark dunes on Endeavour's floor.

Opportunity just started moving again two weeks ago, after spending more than four months at a site along Endeavour's rim called Greeley Haven. The rover sat out the harsh Martian winter at the site, whose tilt allowed Opportunity to angle its solar panels toward the low-hanging sun.

While Opportunity was motionless for a long stretch, it was not hibernating. The robot continued to investigate nearby rocks at Greeley Haven, and scientists analyzed radio signals from the stationary rover to study Mars' interior.

Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, landed on Mars in January 2004. The six-wheeled, golf-cart-size rovers were originally tasked with three-month missions to look for signs of past water activity on Mars.

Both robots delivered from their separate landing sites, finding lots of evidence that the Red Planet was once a much wetter, warmer place. And then they just kept going, far beyond their warranties.

Spirit went silent in March 2010 after failing to get into a good position to wait out the Martian winter, and the rover teamdeclared the Mars rover dead last year. But Opportunity is still going strong, continuing to add to the 21.4 miles (34.4 km) it has driven to date on the Martian surface.

Opportunity will soon have company on the Red Planet. NASA's newest Mars rover, the 1-ton Curiosity, is slated to land on the night of Aug. 5. The car-size Curiosity's main goal is to assess whether its landing site is, or ever was, capable of supporting microbial life.

Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Mars Opportunity rover sees its own shadow in crater
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2012/0524/Mars-Opportunity-rover-sees-its-own-shadow-in-crater
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe